All through ePayments – Indian EPF settlements in 3 days

To improve its image amongst Indian employees, EPFO (Employee Provident Funds Organization) has decided to increase the settlement claims within 3 days from the present 15% to 70%

EPF—commonly called PF—is a retirement benefit scheme that is available to the salaried employees. Both employees and employer contribute to the Fund at the ‘rate of 12%’ of the basic wages, dearness allowance and retaining allowance (if any) payable to employees per month. Thus, the total contribution to the Fund is 24%.

Large corporate have their PF Trust, but many other corporate do not have the expertise to handle PF Trust complexities. Hence, they prefer to be part of EPFO, which has been set up Government of India.

The body is managing a corpus of around Rs 5 lakh crore with a subscribers’ base of over five crore.

Way back in April 2010, NEFT was chosen as the preferred mode to settle claims. In March 2013, EPFO’s Banking and Finance Division clarified that NEFT was to be the preferred mode, irrespective of the settlement amount, if the Members bank account is NEFT enabled, the settlement has to be through NEFT only.

20 Star Offices of EPFO settle 60% of the claims within 3 days. Overall Pan-India rate is 16%, which the EPFO now wants to push it to 70%

This will be a major boost to it’s image. Is this difficult? No, ‘where there is a will, there is a way’.

The adopted path :

Meeting of all its Zonal Heads on July 5th, 2013.

The body is also in the process of introducing a facility where claimants would be able to apply online for transfer and withdrawal of their PF from July 1.

EPFO is setting up a central clearance house which will be operational on July 1. This will enable subscribers to apply online for settlement of withdrawal and transfer of funds claims.

The new facility will also enable subscribes to track online the status of their applications for transfer and withdrawals.

Under the new system, the onus of verifying the details of the PF account from previous employers would be on the EPFO.

At present, employees have to get their applications verified from their employers for settlement of claims.